May 25, 2008

“My life has been divided into three parts in the show-business world: nightclubs, television, and then I was a director for 30 years of television shows. And I think the most fun I ever had was nightclubs. I loved nightclubs.”

And we loved you on television. "Laugh-In" came on in 1968, and you were more of an early-60s Playboy-type guy. But no matter. "Laugh-In" was a jumble, and you were part of it, the dumb guy in an old-fashioned comedy team stuck into a trendy new show that everyone watched back then.

Laugh-in was one of the few TV shows my parents watched regularly. It was also one of the few we kids (me, in early elementary school, and my brothers, a little more than twoyears younger) watched with them. My dad's theory--outright spoken, at the time and since--was that it wasn't a problem so long as we didn't get some of the more adult allusions and implications.

I had far more grasp of both a poker face and an innocent blank face as a kid than I did in later years. Dad and I have laughed about this, a lot, many times, since then.

(My parents only **thought** I tuned out what adults said, or that I didn't pretty much hear, listen to and suck up everything they said.

Ultimately, the deliciously cosmic turn-about-is-fair-play moment is theirs. Because while my child is, on balance, more like his father than me, one of the ways in which he is an absolute chip off his mom ... is in this exact area. You have no idea how much enjoyment this engenders. At my expense, which is exactly perfect.)

Many years ago I was a lonely little kid watching “Laugh-In” with my parents and I’m sure 99% of it went right over my head.

I really, really liked it but I can't say why except to say I felt as if there was a place for me in that colorful, disjointed, high-spirited world.

And it’s only now, decades later, I realize Dick Martin was the first and only person on TV I ever really, really liked. I mean I liked him personally as if he were my kindly, funny-man uncle living in the real world or something.

I guess it was a passing phase.

And I’m left feeling a little sad to hear that he’s died now realizing I haven’t even so much as thought about Dick Martin for decades.

Perhaps that’s just as well. In my maturity I’d have to see him in a whole new light. I’d have to see him as little more than an attenuated Quagmire -- disappointingly earnest or timid by comparison.

(I doubt even the most naïve of lonely little kids could actually feel avuncular affection for Quagmire.)